April 2017 – Etzanoa Conservancy

The Cowley CourierTraveler
April 7, 2017

Kansas House formally recognizes Etzanoa

By FOSS FARRAR
Etzanoa Conservancy

Courtesy Photo Anita Judd-Jenkins (at podium) reads a resolution acknowledging the ongoing archaeological studies being conducted in Arkansas City, as the site of the huge ancestral Wichita Indian settlement of Etzanoa. Standing behind her are Ark City residents who have promoted and participated in the studies of the prehistoric Native American site, archaeologists and archaeology enthusiasts.

TOPEKA — The Kansas House of Representatives on Wednesday recognized recent archaeological research pointing to Arkansas City as the site of the huge ancestral Wichita settlement of Etzanoa.

House members applauded after approving a resolution that was read by Anita Judd-Jenkins, Republican representative from Ark City.

Standing behind her as she read from a podium were several Ark City residents, archaeologists and archaeology enthusiasts who have promoted and participated in the studies of the prehistoric Native American site.

“Based on the evidence, the Etzanoa archaeological site of a 5-mile-long settlement of an estimated 20,000 ancestors of the Wichita tribe, thrived from about 1425 to the early 1700s,” Judd-Jenkins said in prepared remarks.

“Archaeologists agree that a city of this size would be the second-largest prehistoric Native American site ever discovered in the U.S. and Canada, making it a possible candidate for being designated as both a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and a National Historic Landmark.”

Judd-Jenkins noted that Spanish explorers in 1601 followed up on a previous search for Quivira, the land of the “lost cities of gold.” Francisco Vazquez de Coronado led an earlier expedition to central Kansas in the early 1540s.

In 1601, Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, the first governor of New Mexico, led 130 men on the trek north and east from New Mexico into Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Oñate and his men eventually reached a town near the confluence of two rivers that they called the “Great Settlement.” The natives called the town “Etzanoa.”

The Spaniards documented the visit to Etzanoa, including their observations and measurements of the town and their estimate of its population. Their observations were recorded a year later in Mexico City. A large volume comprising those documents includes two expedition maps. It is now preserved in Seville, Spain.

Judd-Jenkins introduced the following people who traveled to Topeka to witness her presentation:

Don Blakeslee, Wichita State University professor of archaeology; Robert Hoard, State Archaeologist of the Kansas Historical Society; Otis Morrow, V.J. Wilkins Foundation trustee; Karen Zeller, V.J. Wilkins Foundation trustee; Nick Hernandez, city manager of Arkansas City; and Jay Warren, city commissioner and former mayor of Arkansas City.

Hap Mcleod, Etzanoa Conservancy president; Adam Ziegler, Lawrence Free State High School student and discoverer of the first Spanish artifact at the Etzanoa battle site; and the following Etzanoa Conservancy members — Jann Ziegler, who is Adam’s grandmother; Carol House, archaeological site land owner; Jason Smith; and Foss Farrar.

In her presentation, Judd-Jenkins said citizens of Ark City have long known that the area near the confluence of the Arkansas and Walnut Rivers in eastern Arkansas City was someplace special. In 1870s, early Ark City residents found many Native American artifacts including broken pots, earth pits full of bones, rock carvings and tools.

Judd-Jenkins summarized findings from recent field studies conducted along the banks of the lower Walnut River in eastern areas of Ark City.

Archaeological teams who surveyed eastern Ark City prior to the building of the U.S. 77 bypass found artifacts dating from 600 to 1800 AD, based on carbon dating, she said. And a large-scale field study in Ark City during the summer of 2015 using some of the latest archaeological technology turned up more artifacts, including metal balls fired in canister shots from canons during a battle at the southern end of Etzanoa.

WSU archaeologist Blakeslee organized and led the 2015 archaeological study. Blakeslee’s teams spent a week in surveying the Etzanoa site in Ark City and another week in Lyons doing follow-up studies of a Quivira site there. He and his teams used magnetometers and metal detectors as well as a mobile archaeological lab that tested potential artifacts.

“With the generous funding of the V.J. Wilkins Foundation, the Archaeology Channel spent two weeks filming the 2015 archaeological studies conducted by Dr. Blakeslee and his teams,” Judd-Jenkins said, “with the cooperation and support from the city of Arkansas City, and the Arkansas City Historical Society.”

Then she announced that the Archaeology Channel’s film, “Quivira: Conquistadors on the Plains,” was being shown continuously on Wednesday in the Statehouse Visitors Center Auditorium.

“It describes the work and discovery of the true Etzanoa on the banks of the Walnut River in south-central Kansas, just above the Oklahoma border,” she said.

Monday, April 3, 2017
Wichita State University

Wichita State professor of archaeology Donald Blakeslee began on-site research of the town of Etzanoa in 2015.
Since then, he has worked to rewrite the history of the town, which was previously thought to be a cluster of villages.
Blakeslee has involved Wichita State students with the research and hopes to continue researching the site in years to come.

Donald Blakeslee, professor of archaeology at Wichita State University, presented in March at the annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology discussing recent archaeological evidence that shows a thriving ancestral Wichita Indian town of more than 20,000 residents near Arkansas City, Kansas.

The discovery began with new translations of old Spanish documents by the Cibola Project at the University of California, Berkley. Members of the team made photocopies of the original documents, re-transcribed them from the Old Spanish and then retranslated them. Earlier historians and archaeologists who had used the documents dealt with misleading errors in transcription and translation, which is why many archaeological discoveries in the area were misinterpreted.

“It has been a lot of fun to rewrite the record so thoroughly. By joining the historical written record to the archaeology, we ended up rewriting both fields,” says Blakeslee. “Rather than a cluster of 30 little villages, there was a single town of 20,000 people.”

Research of the town, called Etzanoa, has completely revised the understanding of protohistoric settlements in the southern plains. Previous scholars often dismissed the Spanish population estimates as exaggerations, but with the evidence of the archaeological finds it can no longer be dismissed.

“One implication is that Old World epidemic diseases had not yet reached this region, but probably did so by around 1650, because there were far fewer Wichitas when the French arrived in 1718,” says Blakeslee.

Blakeslee reported archaeology that coincides with eyewitness accounts from five soldiers of Spanish explorer and founder of New Mexico, Juan de Oñate, who were interviewed in Mexico City in 1602.

Scattered surface finds match the description of the town as extending about five miles, and the description of the landscape and route of the Spanish army also line up. The biggest piece of confirmation came with the discovery of the site of a battle fought there in 1601. Metal detectors were used to uncover small iron shot from in front of the ravine where natives took shelter and well beyond it where shots eventually fell.

Blakeslee began work at the site in 2015 when he invited leaders of the Wichita tribe to visit and spent a week there researching. He’s been able to involve WSU students with the research as well and has taken them to the site each summer since. They plan to be there for four weeks during summer 2017.

“Work at Etzanoa will continue for the rest of my career and beyond,” says Blakeslee. “It will be an important part of WSU’s future.”